States like companies and organizations reorganize themselves in a serious way to the treatment of big masses of information: it is the advent of Big Data.As other economic, industrial and social actors radically reorganize their activities around the management of this data in Big Data.For example, « Chief data officer » in the United States, « Chief digital officer » responsible for the « Government Digital Service » in Great Britain, « General Data Administrator » in France, etc.These public administrators are responsible for ensuring that the country values its data, presented as new sources of material and intangible growth unexplored or partially.

The same phenomenon of Big Data is at work in the academic world with more enthusiasm. In line with major research centers such as the Media Lab (1985) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), many universities have created centers dedicated to the analysis of Big Data in constant evolution with the « Data Science ». For the humanities, it is the birth of the « Big data and Society » which aims to study Big Data and their impact on societies « . These are the practical Big Data implications and how they reconfigure the relationships, the expertise, the methods, the concepts and the academic knowledge in the social, professional and business sectors.

If Big Data interest but also evoke multidisciplinary debate? The enthusiasm of the artisans of these techniques is not always shared. In this case, the repeated revelations of massive surveillance of populations, the research world as well of civil society highlight the dangers of these methods, which can quickly turn into powerful technologies of government: a conscious and instrumental will to serve economic, political-societal and ideological interests.

Today, we have more data than ever before in human history. Data volumes multiplied by 100 between 1987 and 2007, then doubled on average every year. An increase infinitely greater than that caused by the invention of printing (J. Gutenberg), which had resulted in a doubling of data over 50 years.

Thus, comprehensive data set analysis can change our view of the world.The contribution of Big Data remains a project that insinuates reason and rationality in our complex world.If the scientific method is based on the premise that one can derive from abstract theories concrete assumptions about reality.The assumptions themselves can be tested using the data collected for this purpose.In this reasoning, Big Data will profoundly alter these two rational foundations, not to challenge scientific rationality, but to move it to a higher stage: for a more complex, broader and more exact interpretation of reality.

In a transdisciplinary enthusiasm, Big Data allows us to no longer bend reality to categories a priori and now to let the data give us themselves the categories which contain while faithfully reflecting the reality.

TBMS’2019 International Symposium on « Big-Data-Analytics Technologies for Strategic Management: Innovation and Competitiveness » explores the practical implications of Big Data and how it reconfigures relationships, expertise, methods, concepts and academic knowledge in all sectors: social, professional and economic.

OCTA Organization:The international multiconference OCTA and its projects, communities and scholarly societies (SIIE, ISKO-Maghreb, CITED and TBMS) will be held in Tunis at the ALECSO (Arab Organization for Education, Culture and Science) from 6 to 8 February 2020. The organization is under the aegis of the University of Tunis with its partners, and national & international sponsors: ISKO-Maghreb Chapter (confirmed) and IEEE Tunisia section – Advancing Technlogy for Humanities (confirmed).

Special issues for publications (Journal & Books) in OCTA’2019 and conferences’s projects: